1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and a control method thereof. More particularly, the present invention relates to an information processing apparatus including a conversion circuit connected with a hard disk drive and a control method thereof.
2. Related Art
An interface of a hard disk drive used as an information processing apparatus, for example, has been changed from an ATA (advanced technology attachment) interface to a serial ATA interface as disclosed in JP-A-2008-15856. When a hard disk drive employing the serial ATA interface is used as an information processing apparatus employing the ATA interface, an ATA/serial ATA conversion circuit is provided between the ATA interface of the information processing apparatus and the serial ATA interface of the hard disk drive, so that the hard disk drive employing the serial ATA interface can be used.
In such a case, the ATA/serial ATA conversion circuit systematically determines if the hard disk drive connected with the ATA/serial ATA conversion circuit is only a master (device 0) of an ATA standard, or a slave (device 1) as well as the master (device 0) after the hard disk drive starts to operate. Further, the ATA/serial ATA conversion circuit automatically determines that self-diagnosis of the slave (device 1) has been completed based on a PDIAG signal received from the slave (device 1).
However, in a case in which an information processing apparatus, which does not allow the slave (device 1) to be connected with the master (device 0), when the ATA/serial ATA conversion circuit is used, the ATA/serial ATA conversion circuit waits for a control signal, which must be output from the slave (device 1), until a predetermined timeout period passes in order to perform the above functions, so a lot of time is required for starting the information processing apparatus. Thus, even if a user wants to use the information processing apparatus immediately, the user must wait until the information processing apparatus starts to operate.
Further, such a problem may occur in an interface conversion circuit, which performs conversion between interfaces having specifications different from each other, and an information processing apparatus including various conversion circuits, which are connected with a hard disk drive, as well as the ATA/serial ATA conversion circuit.